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The Washington Post discusses a recent study that appears to throw into doubt whether prayers for an individual's return to health may act as a form of medical healing. According to the article,

Praying for sick strangers does not improve their prospects of
recovering, according to a large, carefully designed study that casts
doubt on the widely held belief that being prayed for can help a person
heal.

The study of more than 700 heart patients, one
of the most ambitious attempts to test the medicinal power of prayer,
showed that those who had people praying for them from a distance, and
without their knowledge, were no less likely to suffer a major
complication, end up back in the hospital or die.

* * * *

Surveys have shown that millions of Americans routinely pray
when they are ill or when someone they know is. A growing body of
evidence has found that religious people tend to be healthier than
average, and that people who pray when they are ill are likely to fare
better than those who do not. Many researchers think religious belief
and practice can help people by providing social support and fostering
positive emotions, which may produce beneficial responses by the body.

But
the idea that praying for someone else -- even when he or she is
unaware of it -- can affect a person's health has been much more
controversial. Several studies have purported to show that such prayer
is beneficial, but they have been criticized as deeply flawed. The
debate prompted a spate of new studies aimed at avoiding those
shortcomings, including the new study, which is the first to test
prayer at multiple centers.

I always thought that prayers for others were nice, but I wasn't clear that they could have any actual medical effect. Anyway, I hope that a study will be forthcoming which discusses the harm, or lack of harm, that occurs when a person fails to answer one of those chain e-mail letters.[bm]